BLUEFIELD, W.Va. — The on-going aggression of the Nazi war machine, Italy’s fascist regime uniting with the Germans and Emperor Hirohito’s attack on Pearl Harbor — had Americans ready when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt asked Congress for a declaration of total war on the Axis powers.
“Everyone was joining the armed services and going off to war,” Melvin Grubb of Bluefield recalled. In the spring of 1942, he was just completing his junior year at Bluefield’s Beaver High School, so his time to join had not yet arrived. However, his older brother Lowell Grubb, was out of school, and ready to serve.
With the nation at war, Roosevelt, the beloved president who led the nation out of the Great Depression, issued a proclamation on March 20, 1942, establishing April 6, 1942 as “Army Day” in the U.S. …